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Pluggers, 12/5/18

Usually, even though I resent and/or feel cruelly superior to any given installment of Pluggers, I at least understand what the point the panel is getting at is supposed to be, but I have to admit I’m at a loss here. Do … do the inhabitants of God-fearing locales like Plano assume that us big city liberals are too busy doing gay socialism to each other to take the proper care to put on our belts properly? Or is this an obscure fat joke that I’m just not getting?

Slylock Fox, 12/5/18

Which one of these creatures can see in complete dankness? Because every single one of them is high as hell.

What The Funky: “‘Ballpark’? Why not the football field? Bull Bushka started to dig a hole last winter! Why let it go to waste?”

Festering Wordflay: “Gee, Grandma, why not let me give them The Talk? I’m only ten years old, but I know more about it than both of them put together!”

Fetid Whattasnore: “Dad, with their vast experience in dealing with the elderly, and their staunch belief that parents listen to their children, the nursing home staff asked me to ah, um, eh, tell you to keep your fly buttoned.” “‘Buttoned’? Funky, my pants have zippers! Just how out-of-date are you, son?”

Floundering Weasels: “Mom, at times like this it’s okay for you to call Funky my step-father!”

Fumbling Weirdos: Poor Cory. He looks like a ten-year-old who got a hideous sweater as an early Christmas gift. Kid, you’re ugly and your mother really does dress you funny.

Judge Cratered: Shouldn’t a Christmas vacation include, well, Christmas? Or is Clan Parker a Satanic coven that doesn’t celebrate . . . oh. That explains the recent bad luck. You’d think lawyers would have sold their souls for seven years of incredible good luck per soul, delivered in separate seven-year segments. Watch out for that fine print, guys!

Judge Mental: “Ready?” “You bet I am, Marie!” “Okay, let’s have some fun! I can’t wait to make my deposition against those entitled bubbleheads!”

Mari-kari: “Meow!” Which translates as “What you’re going to do is thank me for saving you from your own toxic muffins!”

Nary Worthit: Adopt her!

Mad Magazine’s Phantom: There isn’t enough of that in this strip.

The Menaced Phantom: So this was actually a Zen lesson, in which Master Poo told Junior: “Grass Smoker, write a letter to organize the thoughts you never have!”

Which one of these creatures can see in complete darkness? Answer — The fish skeleton. Though its physical eyeballs have long since surrendered to decay, its trapped, haunted soul remains restless within those bones, its unblinking eye sockets forever forced to stare at the nightmarish beings that creep on the blackest edges of our reality.

I just leave a belt in my only pair of jeans, so when I need to throw them on there’s no fumbling in the dark. But I only wear them once a week or so, I know it’s part of the Pluggers daily uniform. Ten years from now I anticipate a lot of Plugger Carhartt submissions.

SF: I always wondered: we know that the regime after the Animalapocalypse cares about animal welfare, but what about welfare-welfare? The answer is, not much. Poor animals must look for food in the trash, without any state assistance (like food stamps) or private charity from the rich (food banks or homeless shelters). I guess there is not enough solidarity between species to inspire compassion. However, it seems that those poor, hungry animals are able to organise, assign tasks and share the result in a fair way. Is the Animalapocalypse just the February Revolution preparing the October one?

P: Rhino Plugger is fixated with belts since his fathers beat him mercilessly with a belt and he secretly resents the fact that his children were strong enough to break the cycle of violence by refusing to even spank his grandchildren. It’s funny because Pluggers are so ruined that they are unable to imagine parental relationships without abuse!

Phantom: He sealed the envelope before putting the letter in. Steam works better to reopen it.

MW: Wasn’t there someone else recently who was just as interested in your muffins as Libby? Give him Libby and he’ll appreciate the irony of the play on words winking at him the rest of his days.

ASM: Killgrave: “I’m sick of counting people and only getting to one -ONE person in my life ah ah ah. Now there are two -TWO people in my life ah ah ah. [thunderclap] Did i mention im a count?”
Cage: “That means you’re rich?”
Kikkgrave: “That’s one -ONE common misconception ah ah ah! I’m liking this already!”

The Amazing Spider-Man: As someone with ready access to hi-tech “car” technology, I’m genuinely curious: do people take a cab out of downtown to “pick someone up at the airport” and then ride back in the cab with them? Or was he going to Spider-Man it out to the airport, far past the high rises he could swing from, in order to grab an Uber back with her? Maybe “picking her up from the airport” would mean swinging from webs or jumping from truck to truck with her and her luggage of several months on his back? It doesn’t sound like he’s actually thought this through, but, anyway, the balloons are nice (lame, but nice).

My reaction to Pluggers was pretty much the same as Josh’s, but the first comment at GoComics was total agreement that it’s vitally important to never miss a belt loop, so I guess we just don’t understand the ways of the Folk.

– A plugger always aligns their buttons with their buttonholes.
– A plugger always puts their head through the big hole at the top of their shirt.
– A plugger always places the pouchy part of their sock over their heel.
When a Plugger gets done dressing, they shout “I did it all by myself!”

Pluggers: As others have already pointed out, I think the intended joke is that fat folk have to put their belts on their pants first because they really can’t reach around once they’re on. I, however, choose to beleive that it is because Pluggers take their pants very seriously, as they still retain distant memories of their naked animalistic past before that wizard transformed them into the middle-aged humanoids they are today.

Sfx: Ok, so the turtle eats apples, the rabbit eats carrots, the cat eats mice and the duck eats…sausage? Is that what they’re known for, consuming ground meat stuffed in intestines? Is there something I don’t know about waterfowl? /glances nervously at the quacking ‘V’ in the sky/

@Ettorre: Re Pluggers – Thanks to poachers, his father is now a belt, so it all worked out. Poetic justice.

Frazz – Frazz is so superior to people who save money by buying non perishable items in bulk. Oh, God, I’m defending Pluggers who buy those enormous packs of toilet paper. I guess I have contempt for Pluggers but loathe Frazz.

9CL – An entire week of this garbage? Really, Brooke? This brings padding a story to a level rarely seen anywhere.

Pluggers: If you didn’t get today’s joke, it’s because it’s a follow-up to yesterday’s. You wanted to know what Henwife was getting up to when Dogman took a Gunsmoke marathon nap? You didn’t, but the answer is “kinky belt BDSM with the Rhinoman.”

Luann: Well, I guess these two are a serious thing now. In fact, I think exchanging backpacks in the most physically intimate thing I’ve seen anyone do in Luann. Does that make this public display of affection unnecessarily gross? Yes. Yes, it does.

JP: Whoa, it’s like a reverse Wilbur and Fabiana.

MW: As quickly as Libby entered our lives, Karen Moy wrote excuses for Mary to get rid of her. Sure, today might seem like a complete filler strip, but it’s important to enjoy the time we have with Libby before she gets kicked into the plot gutter with Saul and Greta.

Honest question, since I haven’t really been paying attention – when did Pluggers HQ move to Florida? I could have sworn it was in another state previously…months ago? Years? Anyone who can help out wins the coveted Invisible Trophy.

Thank you Slylock for the vivid imagery of a duck greedily sucking down link after link of raw trashcan sausage. The stillness of the night broken only by the sound of its toothless beak mashing processed meat into greasy paste.

Okay, you made me look at Frazz. And, uh, yeah, it’s hilarious that people buy non-perishable goods in bulk, I guess. I’m especially wondering why the kid thinks that someone who buys a lot of paper towel must have a lot of cats. What does paper towel have to do with cat ownership in particular?

Phantom: Up in smoke. Like my dreams of a juicy role in the Phantom. No letter to deliver to NYC. No future here for me (snif, whinny)

Oh, look! In Judge Parker! There’s my friend, Marie! That’s not Roy Rogers she’s with ..what’s goin’ on? Is she going to need HELP? I’d better see if Sid can get me panel time as Farah …. *somebody* in that comic needs to have some horsesense.

Kevin & Kell: Wait till Josh finds out that the main character is the CEO of a company that hunts down prey citizens, slaughters them, and sells the carcasses to the carnivore citizens for food. Or that the Rabbit Council is funding the company on the condition that Rabbit is not in the inventory.

@39 Rube: What does paper towel have to do with cat ownership in particular? Haven’t you seen all those YouTube videos of naughty cats unspooling paper towels? The little scamps. [Sequitur whispers] Oh. Cats unspool toilet paper. OK, I’m with you. No idea of the paper towel-cat connection.

Pluggers put their belts on one loop at a time, and for some reason they consider this a badge of honor.

SFx: Little did Slylock know that after hours Max Mouse would throw off his shorts and kicky bowler hat and run with the animals that missed the good old days of living wild and free, unshackled by the constraints the Glorious Animal Regime imposed on its citizens.

@TheDiva: Okay, some information. Still, the comic seems odd. My wife and I often buy those big packages of paper towel, and we don’t have cats. It’s just easy and inexpensive to have a bunch around, and we use a fair bit of it to clean up in the kitchen and bathroom. It’s not really all that mysterious, and pretty definitely not that funny.

@Rube: Yeah, it’s a pretty big leap in logic to go to “people who buy paper goods in bulk must use more of them than normal people” rather than the obvious “people who buy paper goods in bulk are just trying to save themselves a little time and money.”

Just as in our world, the post-animal takeover world of Slylock Fox has a desperate underclass that scrounges in garbage for something to eat, and uses drugs to take the edge off their bitter and miserable life. And what’s with that chicken leg and sausages? Do they roast and process their dead as part of a funerary ritual and then just throw the remains out in the trash?

JP: Hate to tell you this, Senor Gigolo, but you are so barking up the wrong tree. Marie only works for the Spencer-Drivers. The closest you’re going to get to an emerald like your sister Fabiana is a lime green Tootsie-Pop.

I just want to know how the biggest news in comics has gone unremarked here. That’s right — Garbage Ape week continues! Heathcliff’s continued absurdist anti-humor is truly the comic for the zeitgeist.

Pluggers – Well, this is a bit of a stretch, because I don’t know how to connect a Plugger to island life, but when I put ‘don’t miss a belt loop’ into the Googles, the first hit from My Island Jamaica sez that it’s a thing on the island that if you miss a belt loop it means your significant other is cheating on you.
I imagine poor Rhino man is so desperate to cling to any semblance of a real life (this is the guy who hocked his television, remember?) that he doesn’t want to risk losing the only thing left to him: his chicken wife. Or is he married to the kangaroo? These soap strips are so hard to follow sometimes.

DICK TRUCULENT: “He’s still up there fixing the bell tower!” Nope, NOT gonna look that euphemism up in Urban Dictionary.

AGNES: Phrase to work into conversation today: “Mom had many skills before she got hooked on waffles.”

PHANTOM: This just in — historic Tibetan or Northern Indian or someplace lamasary burns to the ground. Authorities blame candle which, being bored with life after listening to some idiot westerner natter on for two weeks reading aloud his letter home to Daddy, decided to sacrifice itself to be sure this can never happen again. Well, at least not until Dawn over in MARY WORTH decides to write to Wilbur.

@TheDiva: Well, that’s consistent with Frazz’s “people who aren’t triathletes are just fat lazy losers” message. I mean, saving time by making one big trip to the store rather than a bunch of trips? How lazy is that, right!?

@The Ghost of Jarrod: What the hell is that in the sky? Some kind of giant atmo-shark with glowering yellow eyes? So Garbage-Ape floats away on magic Bubble-Yum leaving our sky predator to eat all the land-bound cats? Yikes!

Most mall Santa’s require you to buy some photo package to sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what you want. Go ahead and take your phone pics, but rest assured our photos won’t be in a folder with a bunch of dick picks. Save you the embarrassment when you are showing grandma and grandpa.

Of course, any picture with Edd in it is automatically a dick pic, so carry on.

Mary Worth: Mary is enjoying her breakfast and will not let a street cat horn in on this treat. I’m guessing Bombay Sapphire Gin, cut with a minimal quantity of tonic water, as a pairing for her blueberry muffin.

Pluggers: A true plugger has to get up well before the crack of dawn to begin the intricate and time-consuming “pre-belting” process for his voluminous pants. Meanwhile, a plugger’s wife is wondering why all the lights are on in the middle of the night. “Doug, it’s three in the morning. Why is it so bright in here?” “I’M PRE-BELTING, MAUREEN! YOU KNEW THIS WHEN YOU MARRIED ME!”

Slylock: So the pothead raccoon is running some sort of charitable food pantry out of that garbage can, right? And I think he’s trying to match up various animals with appropriate foods. The rabbit gets a carrot, naturally. And turtles are famous for eating apples, as we all learned back in kindergarten. Gotta be honest, I didn’t know about ducks and sausage links. But I’ll take this cartoon’s word for it.

@Plugger Shrug: I can’t say that I’ve done a survey or anything, but I don’t think I’ve ever known anybody who put their belt on before their pants. But I’ve got to say, either way, it doesn’t seem to be anything to make a comic strip out of.

I thought Pluggers bought those pants with the elastic band around the top, supposedly negating the need for a belt in the first place? Where have you gone David Letterman? Our Nation turns their lonely eyes to you.

Slylock Fox—That raccoon is handing out the best stuff from that trash can. All the garbage he’s giving away is some piece of intact food. Meanwhile, he’s just keeping a bottle and a pile of bones for himself. He’s got to be stoned out of his gourd.

This is probably a commentary on legalized marijuana, suggesting that the owner of that trash can got stoned and threw out all their food along with part of their stash. A cautionary tale, no doubt.

@Those Annoying Kids: My take on the character is that he grows organic cotton, which he then harvests and weaves into kitchen towels to use in lieu of the wasteful paper towels. And will tell you all about after telling you about his personal best swim last weekend.

I look forward to a future Pluggers of Rhino-man holding a huge stack of mail sent to the old VA address, all marked “Return to Sender, address no longer valid”, and the caption: Pluggers are incapable of dealing with change

@I speak Jive: ” I guess I have contempt for Pluggers but loathe Frazz.”

Rest assured, you’re not alone. I suppose that while Pluggers act all humble while inwardly regarding themselves as superior to non-Pluggers, Frazz and the grade-school kids he hangs out with (yes, it’s creepy) are openly condescending to just about everyone who isn’t Frazz and the grade-school kids he hangs out with (ugh, so very creepy). It’s hard to find that level of naked condescension in a comic strip outside of Chickweed Lane (which is the very creepiest of all).

I’m not sure what today’s Pluggers is meant to signify either, but I like how Brookins’ interpretation turned it into a whimsical/crushing tale of a rhinoman who’s too dim to realize people usually put belts on their pants whilst wearing said pants.

FW: As others have noted, Cory looks about twelve years old here. It can’t be a flashback – there’s no corner tabs or sepiatone. Did the intern who now does the cutting and pasting pick the wrong “Cory” from the image file?

Pluggers: Rhino man standing in his underwear fumbling with somebody’s pants, and you want more joke than that?SlyFx: No ocular cell can signal in the absence of photons. Yet. Owls in white coats are working on it, though.MW: How many times will Mary exclaim “What am I going to do with you Libby?” during the next four weeks. Because by my count she’s up to eight times already.

SLYLOCK: I totally believe this is how such a garbage handout would happen, with the raccoon being the brains of the outfit, such as they are, and the cat second in the line. When I first saw one of my cats, he was chowing down on some kind of carrion alongside a family of raccoons. After he was adopted and became a well-fed indoor cat, he liked to watch raccoons from the house windows, possibly remembering the bad old days.

@Myrtle: And I missed a lot of years of FW: How old is Cory supposed to be, in comparison with the other guy with PTSD who looks to be about 45, 50?
——————————
PTSD ……. Pizza Topping Sexual Deseases? That would be Funky.

@Rube: I’ve read FW fairly consistently from the beginning, but a lot of the details are forgettable. Cory was a young boy when Funky and Holly got married, and as I recall, he is a contemporary of Summer Moore and others, like Bull’s daughter, who are of the second generation. Wally, who is Funky’s nephew or cousin, depending on how you remember it, is maybe ten years younger than Funky, and was in high school (along with Becky, Darrin, and Susan Smith) during Les’s early teaching days at Westview.

Does anyone remember if we ever got a back story on Holly’s first marriage (?) and Cory’s birth father? That’s one of those forgettable details.

Phantom: Kit Jr. is either dutifully burning the letter he wrote to mom and dad or he’s perfecting his method of making documents look old and singed so rubes will think they’re authentic. I mean, that does sound like something a future Phantom should have in his wheelhouse.

RMMD: At first I thought that Jordan was talking about hiring “loyal vets”, which made me wonder how much time he’d spend weeding out traitors and subversives before opening day.

Bob Weber junior’s Baked Animals on Parade: It’s always 4:20 somewhere.
ReFOOB: “…and, therefore, I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until dead.”
Crankshaft: The Lifetouch company once dominated the field of school ‘picture day’ photography and in conjunction with Sears ran hundreds of in-store studios specializing in family photos for the holidays. With the onset of digital cameras, Lifetouch’s business declined, there were mass layoffs, lawsuits over management’s handling of the employee insurance and profit sharing funds. The company has been sold to Shutterfly.
And now you know the source of today’s Batiuk misery strip.
The Adventures of Raul – Cool Motorcycle Guy: Raul lay groaning on the pile of rubble that was once the hotel’s skylight and banquet table. One of the guests looked at Raul and informed him he had literally crashed the Sinaloa Cartel’s Christmas party.
Raul sighed and said: “This is not how I dreamed my life would turn out.”

Pluggers: That’s the way I belt my pants. I had always used to put my pants on first then looped the belt. A few years ago I had sprained my wrist and was having trouble putting my belt on. My wife suggested putting the belt on before I put my pants on. That had never occurred to me. I tried it and sure enough, I had no trouble belting my pants and have been doing it that way ever since. It’s true as well that one never misses a loop that way.

And before you jackals suggest my wife must be a plugger I definitely say she is not.

Pluggers: You know what would be more pathetic than Rhinoman hocks his 30 year old CRT portable TV? Rhinoman saws off his horn to sell to a Chinese apothecary.

RMMD: If you know any Vietnam vets ask them about ham and lima beans, considered the worst of all the C-Rats. Called ham and mammies in polite company and ham and motherfuckers in not so polite. That’s going to be Jordan’s signature dish.

@Uncle Lumpy: #152: My WW2 vet dad wouldn’t eat army messhall liver either, but not because he hated liver, but because the army cooks wouldn’t cook it right. Instead of slicing it thin then frying it up with onions (which he would eat), they baked the whole thing in one tasteless slab like a potroast.

I discovered liver when my Mom cooked calves’ livers for our incredibly spoiled poodle. I couldn’t believe she was keeping it from us, but my Dad’s prohibition was heartfelt. Another Army legacy: he’d do anything to avoid standing in line.

@Ajah: Jef Mallett’s hijacking of Bill Watterson’s drawing style is blatant and is one of the reasons I loathe Frazz. Other reasons include, but are not limited to, Frazz’s smug attitude and moral superiority about exercising, the unbelievable backstory about him being a millionaire songwriter who works as a school janitor, and, most of all, the creepiness of him hanging out with preteens. I seriously loathe this strip.

As far as 9CL Is concerned, it’s downright creepy that Brooke draws meticulously detailed legs of a character based on his own daughter, but I don’t remember his boinkfests involving anything other than consenting adults. I’ve been following it for only a decade or so, so I may be wrong.

Zits: Jeremy doesn’t want to go to the park because that’s where he deals drugs to the kids. He’s afraid that a little kid will walk up to him and ask, “Yo, Jeremy, can you sell me some of your shit?” At which point Jeremy’s mother will ask, “Jeremy, are you selling your excrement to little children? And why would they want it?”

G el C, Uncle Lumpy: MY WWII veteran dad refused to eat any kind of lamb. He was on a troop ship moored off the English coast for a month (waiting to hit the Continent) which bobbed up and down and had all the GIs vomiting over the side, and the only fresh meat the Brits gave them was mutton.

He also hated all chicken except the wings, which I could never figure out. If mom made chicken soup, she had to leave to meat out of his servings. He enjoyed the noodles.

@159 Sequitur: The late-thread interest in my comment was unexpected. You’re right, this scene won’t go anywhere. It@170 Ukulele Ike: Kumato? Was it purple? Joking aside, your cream-cheese-and-kumato samwich on rye toast sounds intriguing. Did you use any condiments? If I could get some good rye bread, I’d give it a try. Oh, and if any store around here stocked kumatoes. Does the cream cheese have any unusual specification? Doesn’t matter, I think we have Philadelphia and maybe store brand made from congealed petroleum distillates and leftover plasticizers.

@Anonymous: Yeah, exactly, precisely what you said. It also annoys me that this condescending smugfest is apparently set in, and makes references to, Michigan, the state where I grew up, and Michigan does not deserve that. Of course Ohio does not deserve what Batiuk does to it, either. And NYC does not deserve the eyerolling alleged adventures of Spider-Man.

MW: Oh for crying out loud. This is NOT how you deal with a foster cat that was given to you by the animal shelter with the clear understanding that YOU would foster it. If you can’t foster it, you call the shelter and let them decide what to do! Duh! YOU DO NOT JUST HAND OFF THE FOSTER CAT TO SOMEONE ELSE! *pant pant* And I have especially strong feelings about this right now because I just paid to have another very nice cat I found on my land neutered and vaccinated and medicated so he can go to a good home. Do it right, Mary, or don’t do it at all!!!

CUL DE SAC: It’s like Richard Thompson was right there in my school. Once a year or so I like to express gratitude for CUL DE SAC and say that it deserves to rerun forever and ever.

BCN: This is far, far more adorable than what happens with my real cats in my real house, which involves random mouse heads and organs showing up here and there on the carpet, and I’m talking real mice.

@Poteet: What’s really insane here is that the shelter asked Frau Worth to take care of Libby for a while because they were short of space. (Which isn’t how shelters work–when they hit their limit, they stop accepting new animals.) MW hasn’t adopted Libby, paid any fees or signed any paperwork . . . but this is going to end with Mary giving away Libby, and getting congratulated by Shelter Lady. And, I hope, being maneuvered into helping find homes for all their pets.